OK, I know it has been beyond a ridiculous amount of time since I have posted anything to the blog... I do not have a very good excuse other than the pat, WOW, have I been busy! I have not had loads of time to train the baby dogs as I have been concentrating on the "older" dogs, getting ready for Nationals, etc...
So, what has been going on, Ummmm, let's see, I have been doing lots of seminars, I think I have become an honorary Canadian citizen as I have been up north so many times the past couple of months! What a wonderful bunch of people those Canadians :-) I have to say I am never disappointed when I head up to the frozen tundra to teach, OK, it is really not always frozen, and, a good time is always had by me, if not all!!!
I do have to give a huge shout out to my friends Phil and Mary Zacharatos as they can put on a party and boy can Phil cook!!
I have also had opportunity to show my dogs a bit :-) Actually it has been a very good year for me in the agility arena, Wally and Maze have been tearing up the courses and SoBe although still pushy, mouthy and just plain naughty has already qualified for team at the 2010 USDAA Nationals and just 2 weeks ago proved that she "can" weave in a trial where she laid down a 21 second open jumpers with weaves course including starting and completing a set of 12 weave poles on the first try!
Have I mentioned lately how much I love that little dog? Oh yea, I have been missing in action so I have not really mentioned anything!
Besides having a great year in agility in general I just returned from USDAA National Championships where Wally got to play in the Steeplechase Finals and Maze got to play in both Team and GP Finals! The boys had fabulous clean runs and other than a slight face plant by Wally and the small collision between Maze and myself in GP Finals we ended up 4th in Steeple, 5th in team out of 180 some teams and, 6th in GP. Not bad I say!
The very best thing of all was the completely and totally unexpected perfectly clean and ultimately fast enough PGP semi final run that landed Able in the PGP Finals on Friday night. Ask anyone and they will tell you the most fun of all at USDAA Championships is running at night under the lights, Able will second that. He absolutely loves the big ring at night! I admit I had to tear up a bit when I was walking the course because this was the perfect way to retire Able from the Championships, thank you Able for the great runs and great memories! Don't worry he is not dead or dying, he is just too old and arthritic to jump 22" very much longer. We really need to live for the moment as the time goes all to fast and the ride ends way too soon.
What a great Nationals it was from a spectator standpoint as well. Every year the competition get stiffer and I come home with all sorts of things that I "need" to train. The sport continues to evolve and just gets more impressive every year.
Hey, I am actually going to AKC Nationals this year! I have not been to Nationals since I took Secret and I am truly excited about going. Maze is fully qualified and Wally is sitting on 5 double Q's with a 3 day trial after Thanksgiving to hopefully procure that 6th double Q. Next year I may actually have to commit a bit more time to AKC as I do love the Nationals and the pups are really doing quite well in the AKC venue.
I realize my foray back to blogging is primarily shameless bragging which I really try not to do but I just needed to :-) I promise now that I have gotten back to it there will be actual training talk forthcoming!
Geoff and I returned from Nationals last night and although I have several lessons today and am of course exhausted I did manage to get a little training in with the Merger man.
After watching all of the incredible running contacts at this years nationals I am determined to get Merger running his contacts, so off we trudged to the building today ready to do a bit of analysis trying to figure out exactly how I am to accomplish this very daunting task with Merger the giant! Well, although I have been working on a stride collection cue on the dog walk for a short time I certainly did not believe that he has yet developed a behavior on the walk that would have anything to do with the steady command I have been incorporating. I was absolutely dumbfounded when he ran the dog walk at speed with a voluntary stride collection at the bottom, both directions :-)
His teeter has evolved into a thing of beauty and the A-frame is most certainly coming along. Weaves are nice and getting better all the time, and his jumping is really awesome!
As a matter fact I entered him in his very first AKC trial in JWW only as a test run and he was brilliant! He Q'd in both runs and the courses were vastly different a really great test of where he is at. The course on Sat. was very open and flowing and the course on Sunday was practically a grid exercise for Merger with a 4 jump pinwheel taken twice. He judged his jumps perfectly and adjusted accordingly.
He had a perfect stay on the start line and was completely at home in the trial environment, playing and acting as if there were not tons of people and dogs all over the place. I was very proud of him!
OK folks next time we talk training!
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